Crain Avenue Bridge Update

was briefed this morning on the progress of the Crain Avenue Bridge repair following the train derailment on Friday of last week and as promised here’s the latest update. The City Public Service Director, Gene Roberts, reports that the Portage County Engineer’s (Mickey Marozzi) post train derailment bridge inspection was completed Saturday November 22, 2008 around 13:00. The bridge inspector identified some damage and movement but did not identify sufficient damage that would cause the bridge to remain closed.

Mickey has authorized the bridge to be opened upon completion of the remaining work to the City’s sanitary and storm sewers that were damaged in the incident.

At 9:00 am Saturday the City Engineer, Jim Bowling, and Gene met with representatives of the CSX & their contractor to discuss repairs of the City’s sewer facilities. Mid West Mole will be on site Monday to complete the necessary repairs to the sanitary and storm sewer. The current thoughts include using the old storm sewer as a casing pipe to reinstall the sanitary sewer and then directionally drill a new storm sewer north of the existing bridge. This work will be engineered in the field based on what is discovered as the work progresses. There is no time for completion known at this time.

The bridge will remain closed until Mid West’s work is completed as the only method to deliver equipment and material is from the bridge south side by crane.

Until the work is completed on the sanitary sewer Central Maintenance will be working around the clock monitoring the sanitary sewer flow and pumping sewage from the east side of the upper tracks (ABC) discharging over the bridge and dropping into the north-south sanitary sewer through a vertical pipe dropped over the side of the bridge.

CSX has authorized release of KPD personnel effective 14:00 hours based on the fact that anyone driving around the road closed signs and across the bridge will not cause a bridge failure.

Best guess at this point is the bridge may open sometime Wednesday based on the fact that Thursday is Thanksgiving and most folks (including Mid West Mole staff) will want to be home.

So it looks like we’ve got a couple of more days before the bridge will be reopened. In the intereim, the City Clerk posted a detour map on the main City web site that I thought was also worth sharing here as well.